Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/57

Rh worst effects of this tendency to compromise appeared in the inability to carry out the economic programme of the Revolution which the revolutionary democracy had formulated with such striking clearness. The revolutionary democracy was in a position to formulate a complete programme of economic reconstruction literally on the next day after the Revolution. Their foresight in this instance is probably less surprising. For the best economists of Russia—the truly creative school of Russian economists—belonged to the Socialist Party. The Economic Department of the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Delegates included some of the best-known economists, with a research section consisting of many of the younger economists of the Russian school.

In a few weeks after the Revolution, this Department presented to the Soviet its programme of economic reconstruction, which was afterwards discussed at the All-Russian Convention of the Soviets and definitely formulated as a resolution of the Executive Committee on the eve of the formation of the first Coalition Government. In the preamble to this resolution the Soviet expresses its awareness of the extreme seriousness of the situation:

"The old régime fell to pieces just because it did not fulfil the task of systematic control of the national economy and industry, which was necessitated by the war."

The Soviet foresees that the exhaustion and disintegration of the national economy, which is progressing with every day of the war, will inevitably lead to economic catastrophe, to social and political anarchy, and to the devastation of the country by the external foe; unless the State is firmly and decisively resolved to intervene at once in the social and economic relations of the country. "The State must intervene immediately, on all sides, and most energetically. The eleventh hour is already passed."

Hence, in order to prevent economic disintegration